What is Space Weather (and why should you care)?

In this class, we will explore the way our sun changes over the eleven year solar cycle and how this can affect events from airline travel, cell phone coverage, and power outages to beautiful aurora and manned spaceflight to Mars. We will also touch on space weather on other planets (including exoplanets) and the possible impact on development of life. If the space weather cooperates, we will try to observe the aurora and related phenomena including sunspots.